Dispatch has announced the release of their first studio album in 5 years – America, Location 12 – due out on June 2nd, 2017 independently via the band’s own Bomber Records/Kobalt Music Recordings. Preorders are available starting today via Dispatch.Merchline.Com and the album will be released in CD, Digital and Vinyl formats. Fans will be able to pick up the LP in limited edition ocean blue colored vinyl, only from the Dispatch web store or on the road. Vinyl packaging also includes a special printed dust sleeve and fold out poster.

America, Location 12 is the result of Dispatch – Chadwick Stokes, Pete Francis, and Brad Corrigan– making the decision to move forward together, trusting the process and fully committing to one another with a shared and renewed sense of purpose. Stokes explains, “We started recording demos about a year and a half ago. I spent much of last winter in a small cottage on my parents’ small farm called Cloudberry Farm. Bradley joined me, and later Pete, as the winter thawed and throughout the summer kept on honing the batch. As fall hit, we took a bunch of tunes to Northern California to record looking over the Pacific Ocean. When the fog permitted, we could watch the sun set into the sea – for two east coast kids and a mountain boy, this is a spiritual thing…. We were able to sonically stretch out in a way we never had before.”

Produced by John Dragonetti (The Submarines) with additional production by Mike Sawitzke (The Eels) and recorded at PanoramicHouse, an isolated studio set in the hills of Stinson Beach, CA,America, Location 12 marks a true return to form for the band. The 11-song set was mastered by Dave Cooley (Animal Collective, Fitz & the Tantrums, M83).

Stokes continues, “We saw an opportunity to sing songs about issues that were of a real concern to us socially.” Pulling inspiration from social and humanitarian causes that make up the fabric of Dispatch, the content on America, Location 12 is more relevant than ever in today’s political atmosphere. He continues, “Everything feels like it’s coming to a head. If we can be a band in today’s climate that brings these issues up in a non-traditional way, then that’s really fulfilling for us.”

To celebrate the announcement, Dispatch also released another brand new album track called “Skin the Rabbit” today, listen now. Single art for “Skin the Rabbit” was shot by longtime friend of the band Brian Nevins at Standing Rock during the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) protests, where he and Corrigan spent time late last year. “The woman dressed in her tribal feathers and colors was carrying a chalice burning sage, and sharing the smoke with any and all who walked near her as an offering of peace and blessing. It was a total white out blizzard, 40 below wind chill, and yet her smile and strength burned so bright that we all felt warm and immovable standing together,” Corrigan remembers.

When asked about the song, Stokes said “Skin the rabbit is what my dad used say to my brothers, sister and me before tub time. We’d put our hands in the air and he’d take off our shirts. The metaphor has taken a less literal meaning in the song as we talk about skinning the rabbit more along the lines of exposing those who crave power in the name of the people…there are references to the DAPL, gun violence, the opioid epidemic and the killing of 31 million buffalo in 13 years.”